These inventions relate to the field of Danger Warning and Emergency Response Systems and Methods, and more specifically, to comprehensive danger warning and emergency response systems and methods based on the use of GPS location signals used with surveillance satellites, surveillance aircraft/pilotless drones, and ground based mobile and stationary surveillance to detect dangerous situations. Information concerning dangerous situations which exist or may develop and threaten different populations of people in different areas of a county, state, or country, or a group thereof, is transmitted to a warning/command control center which, in-turn, relays broadcast warning messages via pager satellites and/or radio networks or other broadcast communication networks to remote warning devices. The warning devices may be stationary and/or may be mobile units carried in an automobile or on a person, and are responsive to warning signals directed to such devices that are located within specific geographic coordinate locations or areas as determined by the GPS location signals. Expert system technology, such as neural networks and fuzzy logic, is used to derive the emergency warning and dispatch signals.
It is often the case in our complex and advanced technological society that dangerous situations evolve which may threaten the life or property of individual or potentially many hundreds, thousands or even millions of people or to destroy or damage valuable physical assets or natural resources. Such dangerous situations commonly arise because of adverse weather conditions such as violent storms, blizzards, tornados, hurricanes, tidal waves or even extreme conditions of cold or heat. Dangerous situations may also arise because of fire, including, for example, extensive forest or range fires which may threaten populated areas or areas containing other valuable property or natural resources. Another form of dangerous situation may arise from criminal activities, such as are committed by robbers, murderers, rapists, gangs, terrorists or other thugs. In addition to criminal activity, general civil unrest and riots often give rise to dangerous situations in heavily populated areas.
Other dangerous situations that may occur include dangerous chemical spills or toxic waste emissions including emissions into the air or into a water supply or river which is relied upon by large numbers of people. Smog or bad air or other pollution alerts represent another danger we face today. Certain traffic conditions giving rise to unusual congestion and dangerous driving conditions represent another situation that people commonly encounter in our complex society. Contagious diseases may create other potentially dangerous situations that may begin in a localized region and spread outward from that region, endangering many people. Hostile military activities represent yet another dangerous situation that may threaten large population areas. Volcanic disturbances and earthquakes represent additional dangerous situations that may be monitored with the disclosed inventions.
These and other dangerous situations are frequently encountered in our society today. Increasing population densities make it even more urgent that modern technology be employed to the maximum extent to warn large segments of population of impending dangers, and, where possible, to dispatch appropriate assistance to those areas. The need for emergency alerting systems and the possibility of implementing such systems have been recognized in recent years. Examples of such attempts are found in the following U.S. Pat. Nos.: (a) 5,278,539; (b) 4,956,857; 4,993,059; (d) 4,887,291 each of which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety. These systems variously make use of on-premise facility alarm sensors that are used to relay warning signals to appropriate control centers via radio and/or wire line transmission links. Cellular radio links are often used for such emergency communications.
Expert system technology, including neural networks, and fuzzy logic control systems, has also been developed and adapted to a wide variety of uses. In general, expert systems using fuzzy logic inference rules are well known, as described in the following publications, each of which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety: Gottwald, Siegried, Fuzzy Sets and Fuzzy Logic: The Foundations of Applicationxe2x80x94from a Mathematical Point of View, Vieweg and Sohn, Braunschweig Wiesbaden (1993), ISBN 3-528-05311-9; McNeil, Daniel, Fuzzy Logic, Simon and Schuster, New York (1993), ISBN 0-671-73843-7; Marks, Robert J. II, Fuzzy Logic Technology and Applications, IEEE Technology Update Series (1994), ISBN 0-7803-1383-6, IEEE Catalog No. 94CR0101-6; Bosacchi, Bruno and Bezdek, James C, Applications of Fuzzy Logic Technology, Sep. 8-10, 1993, Boston, Massachusetts, sponsored and published by the SPIExe2x80x94The International Society for Optical Engineering, SPIE No. 2061, ISBN 0-8194-1326-7; Mendel, Jerry M., xe2x80x9cFuzzy Logic Systems for Engineering: A Tutorialxe2x80x9d, Proceedings of the IEEE, Vol. 83, No. 3, March 1995, pgs. 345-377; Jang, Jyh-Shing Roger, Sun, Chuen-Tsai, xe2x80x9cNeuro-Fuzzy Modeling and Controlxe2x80x9d, Proceedings of the IEEE, Vol. 83, No. 3, March 1995, pgs. 378-406; Schwartz, Klir, xe2x80x9cFuzzy Logic Flowers in Japanxe2x80x9d, IEEE Spectrum, July 1992, pgs. 32-35; Kosko, Isaka, xe2x80x9cFuzzy Logicxe2x80x9d, Scientific American, July 1993, pgs. 76-81; Cox, xe2x80x9cFuzzy Fundamentalsxe2x80x9d, IEEE Spectrum, October 1992, pgs. 58-61; Brubaker, xe2x80x9cFuzzy Operatorsxe2x80x9d, EDN, Nov. 9th, 1995, pgs. 239-241.
In addition, many patents have been issued for various applications of GPS for locating and tracking objects, and for navigation purposes. Various configurations of GPS-based tracking and communication systems and methods are described in the following documents, each of which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety: Logsdon, Tom, The Navstar Global Positioning System, Van Nostrand Reinhold, N.Y. (1992), ISBN 0-422-01040-0; Leick, Alfred, GPS Satellite Surveying, John Wiley and Sons, New York (1990), ISBN 0-471-81990-5; Hurn, Jeff, GPSxe2x80x94A Guide to the Next Utility, Trimble Navigation, Ltd., Sunnyvale, Calif. (1989); Hurn, Jeff, Differential GPS Explained, Trimble Navigation Ltd., Sunnyvale, Calif. (1993); and U.S. Pat. No.""s: 5,438,337; 5,434,787; 5,430,656; 5,422,816; 5,422,813; 5,414,432; 5,408,238; 5,396,540; 5,390,125; 5,389,934; 5,382,958; 5,379,224; 5,359,332 5,418,537; 5,345,244; 5, 334,974; 5,323,322; 5,311,197; 5,247,440; 5,243,652; 5,225,842; 5,223,844; 5,202,829; 5,187,805; 5,182,566; 5,119,504; and 5,119,102.
While the above listed patents and known applications of GPS and fuzzy logic/expert system technology represent important innovations, none of these systems or methods take full advantage of the capability of GPS location systems used in combination with one or more earth scanning satellites, aircraft, and mobile and stationary ground based surveillance stations together with modern radio paging, cellular telephone or other broadcast communication networks to implement a truly wide area emergency warning and assistance dispatch system wherein a great multiplicity of people are simultaneously warned of impending or existing dangers and of the degree of danger that may be present in different geographical areas. In view of the ever-increasing occurrence of various dangerous or hazardous situations as noted above, it is critically important that these advanced technologies be brought together in an organized manner to warn various populations that may be subject to such dangerous situations.
It is therefore an object of these inventions to provide danger warning and emergency response systems and methods that may be operated simultaneously to warn select multitudes of people of impending dangers or disasters.
It is a further object of these inventions that the warnings received by individual people include indications of the type and degree of danger to which an individual or area is exposed.
It is yet another object of these inventions to provide such danger warning and emergency response over very large geographic areas.
Another object of these inventions to provide such danger warning and emergency response on a localized basis in a small geographic area or group of areas.
It is a further object of these inventions to provide simultaneous warnings to multiple people, with different persons receiving different warning signals depending upon the geographic location of the individuals or groups receiving the warning message or messages.
It is a further object of these inventions to provide danger warning and emergency response systems and methods that may be used for a wide range of emergency and dangerous situations including dangerous weather conditions, dangerous civil unrest, dangerous criminal activity, dangerous traffic situations, dangerous environmental situations, and dangerous medical situations and other dangerous situations that may evolve over specific geographic areas.
It is yet another object of these inventions to provide the danger warning and emergency response capability using existing radio location systems, such as GPS satellites, together with surveillance satellites and or surveillance aircraft/pilotless drones for location and danger indication purposes, and using existing pager satellites and paging systems or other emergency broadcast networks to generate warning and emergency dispatch messages.
It is yet another object of these inventions to provide a danger warning and emergency response systems and methods that may employ a range of radio signal broadcast media including broadcast television and radio signals as well as cable television, and other land based cable and or fiberoptic communications networks to broadcast warning signals to individual warning devices.
It is yet another object of these inventions is to make use of expert system technologies such as fuzzy logic using fuzzy inference rules to generate danger indices depending upon the location of the dangerous situation, the direction of movement of the dangerous situation, the vulnerability of individuals, and the distance of individuals from the dangerous situation.
A further object of these inventions is to provide danger warning and emergency response systems and methods that make use of neural network analysis of image and/or surveillance information to detect particular types of dangerous situations.
Further objects of the invention are apparent from reviewing the summary of the invention, detailed description and dependent claims which are set forth below.
One aspect of the invention is a method of providing an automated, wide-area, danger warning and emergency which includes the steps of (a) detecting a dangerous situation from a detection location, (b) transmitting information signals describing the dangerous situation from the detection location via radio transmission signals to a control center for analysis, analyzing the received information signals in the control center in computer systems employing expert system technology, (d) determining in the control center the degree of danger and its geographic extent based on analysis of the received information signals, (e) generating in the control center a danger warning and emergency response including a danger index indicating a degree of danger within at least one geographic area, (f) broadcasting the danger warning and emergency response from the control center to a plurality of remotely located warning devices each of which has a GPS receiver and the ability to calculate its own location in GPS coordinates, (g) receiving via the broadcast signals the danger warning and emergency response in the remotely located warning devices, and comparing in each remotely located warning device the coordinates of the dangerous situation with its own GPS coordinates for determining the extent to which each remotely located warning device is in danger, and (h) automatically issuing from each remotely located warning device a warning corresponding to the extent to which the issuing remotely located warning device is in danger.
The wide-area coverage of the present invention includes multiple population areas, nation-wide areas or world-wide areas or selected areas thereof.
Other features of this aspect of the invention include surveying the earth from one or more surveillance platforms supported on satellites, airborne craft, balloons or ground based mobile vehicles or stationary structures, and surveying the earth with any one or more of conventional equipment or personnel supported on the platform including video scanning cameras, infrared scanners, chemical detectors, infrared detectors or sensors, image or surveillance signal analyzers, neural networks, high speed vector processing or parallel processing systems, or human surveyors. Preferably each of the platforms has a GPS receiver which determines the GPS coordinates of its supporting surveillance platform, and estimates the GPS coordinates of the detected danger when laterally offset therefrom. These GPS coordinates of the surveillance platform are included in the transmission to the control center.
Still other features of this aspect of the invention are analyzing by employing fuzzy logic and fuzzy inference rules, and using expert knowledge database retrieval and relating the stored database information to the type of danger and the location of dangerous situations.
Still other features of this aspect of the invention are defining the geographic extent of danger in GPS coordinates, defining the geographic extent of the danger as bounded by the radii of two circles centered on a dangerous situation whose center is defined by GPS coordinates, and as bounded by angular sectors between the radii.
Other features of this aspect of the invention include deriving the danger index from parameters including the distance between the dangerous situation and a particular warning device, the rate at which the dangerous situation may be approaching a particular warning device, the vulnerability of a person or property associated with a particular warning device to a particular dangerous situation, and the type of a particular dangerous situation; defining a vulnerability index for a particular area depending upon the presence of a particular structure, natural resource, or population density of the area; and establishing an emergency response dispatch priority using vulnerability factors characterizing different geographic regions. Thus, a dispatch priority may be established by analyzing the vulnerability of a particular structure to one type of a dangerous situation, such as, violent weather situations or earthquakes of various types, and the vulnerability of people to another type of dangerous situation, such as, radiation or disease.
Another feature of this aspect of the invention includes displaying and communicating by visual, wire, voice, synthetic speech, sound or other conventional alert devices in the control center, which may be a warning and command type control center, the results of the surveillance and analysis of signals received from the detection locations or surveillance platforms to alert an operator thereof of the dangerous situation in the surveyed region or regions.
Still further features of this aspect of the invention include transmitting the danger warning and emergency response via a radio link to a pager satellite network or to a ground based pager network or to a ground based broadcast network, and then to the warning device.
Further features of this aspect of the invention include transmitting messages containing a plurality of danger indices and geographic coordinates identifying the regions corresponding to each danger index, identifying predefined danger emergency warning areas and a danger index for each such area relative to an identified dangerous situation and the degree of danger it represents, and broadcasting to remote warning devices located on persons, in mobile land vehicles, in airborne craft, on vessels at sea, or in stationary structures.
Still further features of this aspect of the invention include the remotely located warning device determining that it is located within the geographic area defined by the GPS coordinates of the dangerous situation, and, then, activating warning signals indicating the degree of danger which was communicated via the danger index in the received signals. Depending upon the location of the remotely located warning device, different degrees of danger exist relative to the nature of the dangerous situation as indicated by the received broadcast signals, and if, on one hand, the remotely located warning device be located within a geographic area defined as having a very high danger, then that device will indicate via an audible, visual, vibratory or other warning device the existence of a very dangerous situation, whereas, if, on the other hand, the warning device be located in an area adjacent to a very dangerous situation, then that device will indicate via an audible, visual, vibratory or other warning device the existence of a less than very dangerous situation.
Another aspect of the invention includes receiving the danger warning and emergency response in a control center remote from the warning command control center which dispatches and controls emergency response services to assist in alleviating the dangerous situation. The dispatching of emergency services may be based on a priority index derived from both danger and value indices.
Another feature of this aspect of the invention includes receiving the broadcast danger warning and emergency response directly in emergency response vehicles manned by emergency personnel located in the most dangerous areas who, upon decoding the danger warning and emergency response will immediately know that they are in the proximity of the dangerous situation and may immediately respond accordingly, and determining the locations of such emergency response vehicles or persons by using GPS technology.
Another aspect of the invention includes broadcasting the danger warning and emergency response via a conventional communication network television, AM/FM radio, cable, and fiber optic networks. As before, so, too, this aspect of the invention includes receiving a danger index including geographic coordinates defining regions appropriate to each degree of danger corresponding to the geographic area in which the receiver which may include, for example, a television set, a computer, or a radio receiver is located indicating the degree of danger in which users located in particular areas may find themselves. Where the remotely located warning device may be a television set, the invention includes, receiving in the television set the danger warning and emergency response, displaying on the display screen of the television set an emergency message customized to the location of the television, and identifying in the emergency message the danger and its position from the television display screen based on information resulting from a comparison of electronic data from different sources occurring within the television set. Where the remotely located warning device is a radio receiver the invention includes receiving on the radio receiver the danger warning and emergency response, annunciating from the radio an emergency message customized to the location of the radio or radio receiver, and identifying in the emergency message the danger and its position from the radio annunciator based on information resulting from a comparison of electronic data from different sources occurring within the radio receiver.
Additional features of the present invention include maintaining selected ones of the remotely located warning devices in a stand-by mode, transmitting from the control center control signals to said selected ones of the remotely located warning devices to switch from a stand-by mode to a full-receive mode enabling receiving messages from the control, and short wave transmitting codes from the remotely located warning devices back to the control center indicating that the selected danger warning signals have been received.
The preferred embodiments of the inventions are described below in the Figures and Detailed Description. Unless specifically noted, it is applicant""s intention that the words and phrases in the specification and claims be given the ordinary and accustomed meaning to those of ordinary skill in the applicable art(s). If applicant intends any other meaning, he will specifically state he is applying a special meaning to a word or phrase.
Likewise, applicant""s use of the word xe2x80x9cfunctionxe2x80x9d in the Detailed Description is not intended to indicate that he seeks to invoke the special provisions of 35 U.S.C. Section 112, paragraph 6 to define his invention. To the contrary, if applicant wishes to invoke the provision of 35 U.S.C. Section 112, paragraph 6, to define his invention, he will specifically set forth in the claims the phrases xe2x80x9cmeans forxe2x80x9d or xe2x80x9cstep forxe2x80x9d and a function, without also reciting in that phrase any structure, material or act in support of the function. Moreover, even if applicant invokes the provisions of 35 U.S.C. Section 112, paragraph 6, to define his invention, it is applicant""s intention that his inventions not be limited to the specific structure, material or acts that are described in his preferred embodiments. Rather, if applicant claims his invention by specifically invoking the provisions of 35 U.S.C. Section 112, paragraph 6, it is nonetheless his intention to cover and include any and all structures, materials or acts that perform the claimed function, along with any and all known or later developed equivalent structures, materials or acts for performing the claimed function.
For example, the present inventions generate surveillance image information for analysis by scanning using any applicable image or video scanning system or method. The inventions described herein are not to be limited to the specific scanning or imaging devices disclosed in the preferred embodiments, but rather, are intended to be used with any and all applicable electronic scanning devices, as long as the device can generate an input signal that can be analyzed by a computer to detect dangerous situations. Thus, the scanners or image acquisition devices are shown and referenced generally throughout this disclosure, and unless specifically noted, are intended to represent any and all devices appropriate to scan or image a given area.
Likewise, it is anticipated that the physical location of the scanning device is not critical to the invention, as long as it can scan or image the surveillance area or region. Thus, the scanning device can be configured to scan from satellites, aircraft, pilotless drones, or from ground based vehicles or structures as appropriate. Accordingly, the words xe2x80x9cscanxe2x80x9d or xe2x80x9cimagexe2x80x9d as used in this specification should be interpreted broadly and generically.
Further, there are disclosed several computers or controllers, that perform various control operations. The specific form of computer is not important to the invention. In its preferred form, applicant divides the computing and analysis operations into several cooperating computers or microprocessors. However, with appropriate programming well known to those of ordinary skill in the art, the inventions can be implemented using a single, high power computer. Thus, it is not applicant""s intention to limit his invention to any particular form of computer.
Further examples exist throughout the disclosure, and it is not applicant""s intention to exclude from the scope of his invention the use of structures, materials, or acts that are not expressly identified in the specification, but nonetheless are capable of performing a claimed function.